As any user of surgical needles will readily attest, their handling has always entailed the risk of inadvertent needle punctures, particularly in the area of the hands. Rare, if ever, would be an instance of where even an occasional, much less frequent, user of surgical needles has not experienced repeated accidental needle punctures.
In cases where the inadvertent puncture is occasioned by a needle of assured sterility, no particular hazard of any significant or seriously threatening consequence is presented. Where, however, a needle is being used to inject or extract fluids into or from a body of unknown and possibly infectious germ state, the risk of needle puncture to the user becomes a matter of grave concern due to fact that such user could become seriously, if not fatally, infected.
Consider the practice of dentistry, where a practitioner would typically come in contact with a number of patients of casual acquaintance on a given day. In many instances, each patient will receive one or more injections of an anesthetic, or the like, depending on the dental procedure on hand. After each injection, good practice demands that the needle be recapped, either for re-use on the same patient, or preparatory to its discard. Heretofore, an inordinate risk of needle puncture has attended each needle recapping procedure, a procedure carried out so often and so routinely as to assure an untold number of instances of inadvertent needle puncture.
The long felt concern over accidental needle punctures by the users of surgical needles for fluid injections and extractions has become magnified due to the increasing prevalence of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Of course, for many years, there have been other serious diseases known to be transmitted by inadvertent punctures with infected needles, notably hepatitis. Now, with the lurking AIDS virus, practitioners have come to universally feel that even one accidental needle puncture is, emphatically, one too many. There is, accordingly, a keenly felt need for some expedient means towards minimizing the risk of such punctures.